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The year 2013 and email marketing was about rising above the crowded inbox.

We created this blog to be a resource for email marketers: we cover industry news, highlight success stories and suggest the best tips and tricks we can find. And while we didn't set out to focus on a particular theme this year, looking back over 2013, it's clear that marketers, consultants and technology providers were concerned throughout the year with not getting lost in an over-crowded inbox.

In 2013, we highlighted successful marketers that use attractive design to win conversions. We talked to email managers whose focus on relevant content delivered results and marketers who relied on strong relationships with subscribers to be successful. We saw (just about) everyone freak out while Gmail tried to create a less intimidating inbox for users and the search for the "perfect" subject line continued.

So to close out 2013, we present the top posts from this year about standing out in the inbox.

Symbols and Pictographs help your subject line get noticed. We looked at whether symbols are worth including in subject lines a year ago. The post, a practical guide for marketers, has been a top destination on our blog all year long.

We just got back from Digital East 2013, a conference in Washington, D.C., and our brains and notes are brimming with digital marketing tips and ideas.

As we saw throughout the conference, email remains among the most effective and measurable digital marketing channels.

As one speaker put it, at any given conference, when a social media session and an email session start at the same time, that means there's the room where people care about conversions and ROI and measuring success. And then there's the social media room. (Just kidding. As we recently noted, social and email do and should work hand-in-hand.)

Google recently began rolling out Gmail Tabs, a new option for inboxes that has the email marketing world standing on a ledge.

Gmail Tabs, which began rolling out in May, are an effort by Google to de-clutter the inbox. Once users switch to the new tabs, Gmail will automatically sort messages into different categories. Users can drag messages into a different tab to direct future messages into that category. The available tabs are: